Passing Through: Personal Expressions of Life, Love, and Loss

WHAT: "Passing Through: Personal Expressions of Life, Love, and Loss." An exhibit in many media exploring personal experiences with death.
Featuring: "Witness: Intimate Passages of Birth and Death" an installation by Diana Lynn
The opening reception will include ART SPEAKS!: Guest artists talk about life, love, loss and the creative process.

About the artists:

JANE EDBERG (artist and exhibit curator):
"I unexpectedly created a body of images that depict the grief of a mother who has lost her son. I did not have boundaries to my expression and found myself head high in mustard flowers trying to rediscover the boy who loved to wander those fields in spring. I let myself float down the rivers he swam in and I pressed myself into his belongings. Somehow I knew that if I headed face on into what I feared most, that he was really gone, I might be able to create a new relationship with him based on the fine art of grieving...

Jane Edberg is a Photographic Artist and instructor of Art and Digital Media at Gavilan College. Jane has been fascinated with photography since she was five years old. She now uses both analog and digital cameras to produce her artworks. She is a photographer who combines images with text. Although Jane's main media is photography combined with writing, she will often incorporate painting, sculpting and mixed media into her artwork. Jane has also made videos, films, composed music, choreographed dance performances, danced and directed major art performance venues.
Jane earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Performance Art, Photography and Painting, 1987. and her Masters of Fine Arts in Photography and Performance Art,1989 from the University of California at Davis. In 2005 she completed an interior design and surround mural for the Child Interview room at the Morgan Hill Police Department. Jane is currently completing a book about her artistic explorations relating to the tragic loss of her son Nanda.

COELEEN KIEBERT:
"My art is the expression of a mysterious, quiet story that has within its story line a truth deeper than I can see or understand any other way. Often I wonder how others know what's going on inside of them. How do they know what's really happening? How do they cope with the deeper meanings of life without an art form to tell them? This is the way I find out. The images that appear in the clay lead me to an understanding that is beyond that which I can gain from common reflection. It is a relationship with myself and the language is art..."

Coeleen Kiebert produces ceramic and bronze sculpture inspired from her personal, spiritual and philosophical resources. For the past four decades her work has been exhibited nationwide in museums, galleries and private collections. She teaches in her Rio Del Mar studio as well as other campuses and travels internationally with her students. She is also author of 'All of a Sudden: The Creative Process", an exploration of the stages we go through while creating.

DIANA LYNN:
Artist-photographer Diana Lynn has a M.A. in painting from Humboldt State University, a B.A. in art history from the University of California Riverside, and postgraduate study at UC Berkeley. With a lifelong commitment to fine art and community, she was a California Arts Council Artist-in-Residence, owned a fine arts gallery in Santa Rosa where she initiated the first association of Santa Rosa art galleries, and created Arcata's Nicaraguan Sister City Photo Project. As an artist teacher she worked with Upward Bound at Humboldt State University and taught as an adjunct instructor for HSU as well as several California community colleges. Her work has shown in one-person exhibitions as well as scores of juried exhibitions throughout the west*, including a Special Award for Growing Up in America , Museum of Anthropology, CSU, Chico, CA, and a First Award at Artrium, Santa Rosa Community College. Her photos have also appeared in magazines including Visions, Scouting and Mothering and Boys' Life

WAYNE OLTS:
"This collection of photographs is a sample of my attempt to record through self portraiture a glimpse into the basic question, what is grief, what does it look like? If we never talk about it openly or look at its effect on us, we will never be able to share what this powerful emotion is about. These photographs depict the early chaos, the sense of nakedness, the realization that I have had a new birthday..."

Wayne Olts was born in Oakland, California and lives in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada near Grass Valley, California. He is professor of Anthropology and chair of the Anthropology Department at Folsom Lake College in Folsom, California. He has taught in the California community college system for over twenty-five years, including 10 years at Hartnell College in Salinas. Olts has had a life long interest in photography which he studied at UC Berkeley, Sierra College and the Academy of Art in San Francisco. His work has been exhibited throughout northern California. He also studied documentary film at the Anthropology Film Center in Sante Fe, New Mexico and has made a number of films. Olts became involved in archaeology at an early age and has traveled and done research throughout North America, Africa and Central America. This current project flows from his grief over the death of his wife of forty years last December.

DEDE PLAISTED:
"This work began with an attempt to excavate my soul through imagery influenced by the iconic style of late gothic painting and the early renaissance chiaroscuro. Confronting the guardian of the gate not only involved recognizing its presence but also my absolute right to gain admittance. During the course of that exploration there was loss. It began with loss; it was sustained with loss, and was ultimately liberated with loss. Loss led to a deeper knowledge of the part submerged. It was through this struggle to communicate, to interpret the signs, to gain access through every possible measure that I was able to reintegrate my self. In the end, honest acceptance as well as expectation of that which I had no control over fostered nurturance of my deeper strengths and led to moving on with my newfound awareness.
I fell, I fell, I fell. I did not hit the ground. I can now give..."

Dede Plaisted graduated cum laude with her Bachelor of Arts degree in Studio Art in 1991 from the University of California, Davis. She has since shown and placed several times in the California Works exhibition at the California State Fair. She is a painter whose work has been primarily figurative with an allegorical narrative however her recent series draws inspiration from the rugged beauty of the Mendocino coast where she currently resides.

WHEN: OPENING RECEPTION: NOVEMBER 2ND, 2006, 5-8 PM, Presentations at 6:00 pm
The exhibit runs from October 27 through December 15.
Gallery Hours: